Rite of Passage

It starts Tuesday morning. Something has changed. Work I have been doing for some time now, coming through into my life in new ways.

"Follow me, Gentlemen." Crisp, clear, direct. I have uttered this phrase before, these exact words. I spent almost fifteen years in some kind of cadet program as a teen and college student, and then in the military itself. I was always assured of people following me when I said these words--I uttered them as a senior cadet, then an officer. Inherent in the phrase was the rank structure we all built our lives around. Those who heard it were required by first, their agreement to "play" at being in the military, their own desire to progress in rank and authority (which was predicated on obedience to those placed in leadership roles above them), then later by law. By the sense of fear instilled in them by their Training Instructors. By their contract with the US government that obligated them to follow my orders in exchange for a paycheck, health insurance, housing, education.

Rarely, perhaps never, did anyone follow me because they wanted to. Or because of any power I myself contained. The request, or the order, was hollow. Weak. Brittle. Backed up by forces outside of everyone involved in the exchange.

But this Tuesday is different. "Follow me, Gentlemen." And the men pick themselves up from their post-lunch reverie and follow. This is not a serious ask--we are moving some pieces of wood a few hundred feet, dropping it off at the location where I will spend 36 hours, Tuesday night to Thursday morning. I have spent a half day sawing away at a fallen Big Leaf Maple tree, processing it to be used in the fire at my overnight sit-spot. The wood is, for the most part, already bundled and ready to be carried. Still. I do not hesitate to assert myself. They do not hesitate to follow. 

When we reach the stacked wood, I try, and fail, to hatchet off a large piece from the trunk that I've been sawing away at for some time. I am tired of sawing. Grey suggests I simply bring the log with me. I have lugged it around a bit already; I know that it is at the limits of my physical abilities to lift, but I do not hesitate to hoist it to my shoulder--the log is perhaps six feet long, maybe 40 lbs. Awkward. To walk with it balanced there, through the mud, over the small stream we must cross, is delicate. Difficult. Someone asks me if "[I] got it?" as I lift it. I don't bother to answer. It's obvious that I do. The help I asked for is already occurring--with the piles of bundled sticks carried in the hands of the rest of the group. 

That evening, after dinner, after our preparations for our experience are complete, after we have all toured each other's locations, I tell stories. I tell stories in a way I have not done in 17 years, a 5th grader, bold, without ego, without fear, standing in the front of the classrooms of lower grades at the request of their teachers, telling stories I have written. Later, I read scary stories in preparation for my birthday party sleepovers and those of others. My pre-teen friends learn to love the story of "WHERE IS MY TOE?" complete with startle-scare screaming at the end. Still later, as an older teen during a break at a gymnastics camp, in front of a group of students I am training, at their request, reciting Greek myths I learned in school. "Tell us a story, Laura!!!" I am known for this. I do. Icarus and Daedalus. Prometheus. Persephone. King Midas. 

I have neglected--perhaps tortured into silence--this part of my self. The story-teller. The person who seeks, who sees, who captures the experience. But she comes out on Tuesday night, on the eve of what will become the most transformative experience of my life thus far. I am still not who I once was, who I want to be.  I cannot see others clearly, always. But I am beginning to see myself, and see myself in context. Before the stories, as dinner preparations are underway, while the men chat around the fire and practice bow drill, I am seized with an impulse to get up off my stump and stalk around the outside of the group, 30 feet out, walking back and forth in a half circle in the gloom. I am trying to see these people. Whether they are talking. How much they are talking. What they are talking about. What they are doing. How they are standing. Where they are standing in relation to each other. And finally, how I fit in--and I realize, with a grin, that I fit in exactly where I am. Observing. The mind of a story-teller, a writer, at work, embodied in my physical movement.

Here is the story:

Take four people into the woods. They bring with them excitement. Fear. Silence. They bring with them all the stories they tell themselves about themselves. They bring their edges, even the edges they don't know about.

Leave them there for a long time. Let the wind lash the tree trunks. Take their phones. Let the airplanes drone on, mixed with the bird calls, the rush of water, the sound of distant hammering as a building goes up. Let them choose a place, commit to it, learn it in some deep way that goes beyond words. Let them forfeit food and drink, if they choose. Forfeit their watches, if they choose. Forfeit sleep, if they choose. Forfeit comfort, if they choose. Forfeit even the entertainment of writing, if they choose. 

They come out transformed.

Photo taken by Cameron MacPhail during a trip to Eel Creek earlier in the year.